In Review: Star Trek: Picard (S2 – EP8) Mercy

Synopsis: With time running out before the launch of the Europa Mission, Picard and Guinan must free themselves from FBI custody. Seven and Raffi come face-to-face with Jurati and the horror of what she’s become.

The Story

Picking up from where last week left off. Picard and Guinen have been captured by the FBI in what seems to be an off-the-books operation led by Agent Wells. Having had a chance encounter with some Vulcan’s when he was a child. Wells is determined to find out why Picard is visiting Earth and proceeds to interrogate both Guinen and Picard to determine if they are a threat.

During the course of the interrogation. Guinen gets a visit from Q who has disguised himself as an FBI Agent. She has quite an insightful conversation with Q and gets a few clues as to why he is so set on holding Picard to account. Which is information she feeds back to Picard. At this point, Wells puts all his cards on the table and speaks with Picard about his experience with the Vulcans.

Elsewhere in LA. Seven and Raffi are trying to catch up with Jurati and get a shock when they do catch up with her. They find that the Borg Queen has pretty much taken control of Jurati, but there is still some of her humanity left. As The Borg Queen shows mercy on Raffi where as a fully functional Borg Queen would have killed her. Having gotten away. Jurati who is losing more and more control heads over to Adam Soong’s lab for the next stage of her plan.

The Acting

Patrick Stewart gets some brilliant scenes in this episode as he once again gets to act alongside Ito Aghayere’s younger version of Guinen. The interrogation scenes are done fairly well, but did seem to slow the rest of the storyline down a little bit. But did make for a chance for us to get some insight into Guinen and Q’s history as we see John de Lancie get his chance to play with the new Guinen.

Meanwhile, Michelle Hurd and Jeri Ryan get to do some action and investigation as Raffi and Seven continue their search for Jurati who is being strongly influenced by the Borg Queen. The two women get to share a few scenes that open up Raffi’s character up a little bit when Seven says something that hits a little too close to Raffi’s truth.

Overall

A bit of a mixed bag really as we see three of this show’s story arcs start to converge. While the interrogation scenes were well done and brilliantly acted by all parties concerned. I felt that they did slow the narrative down a little. Which is a tad concerning given that we only have two episodes left. Raffi and Seven continue to show us the complexities of their somewhat messy relationship, which also illustrates why they are such a good match for each other. As both characters carry similar traumatic baggage from their past.

We get a nice little flashback scene in which we see Raffi talking Elnor out of going back to the Vashti, a conversation, which ultimately convinces him to join Starfleet. Of course, hindsight being that bitch that it is. Raffi is now blaming herself for Elnor’s death.

Overall. As already said. A mixed bag.